A basic understanding of radio might help. First—I think spark gap radios were used. Now when I get on the HF Radio I have a hard time reaching someone close versus someone further away—its called skip. Waves bounce along the water, land, etc—someone else might be able to describe it further but that is the gist. So ships close by would not hear a distress call, but ships further away would hear it... And as for atmospherics—yup, happens all the time in radio nothing msyterious about it...
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Excellent explanation. Thanks.
This Titanic story reminds me of the movie “Frequency”. The son is on his Ham Radio and is able to talk “back in time” to his deceased father during a solar storm. Enjoyable movie. (Talk about a “skip”!)
It depends on the band, really. At 40m, I’m not likely to reach Europe, but can easily talk to anyone within 400 miles. At 20m I boom onto Spain on 100 watts. I wonder what frequency they used back in those days?